A/HRC/19/24 I. Introduction 1. The Human Rights Council, in its resolution 16/10, requested the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to submit a comprehensive and updated report to the Council at its nineteenth session, in accordance with its annual programme of work, following the structure and scope of her report and with a special focus on further measures to correct the imbalance in geographical composition of the staff of the Office of the High Commissioner (OHCHR). The present report addresses the composition of the staff of the Office as at 31 December 2011. 2. Chapter II of the present report includes data on staff members in regular budget posts subject to geographical distribution, as well as data on staff in temporary posts funded from general temporary assistance and extrabudgetary resources or in technical cooperation project posts, neither of which are included in the definition of posts subject to geographical distribution. 3. Chapter III contains a description of the measures for improvement taken by the High Commissioner bearing in mind the issues identified by the Human Rights Council in resolution 16/10, while fully observing United Nations Secretariat human resources policies, in particular, its recruitment and contractual policies. II. Composition of the staff of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights 4. The recruitment of staff members to posts subject to geographical distribution is governed by the system of desirable ranges at the Secretariat level. For that purpose, Member States are grouped into four categories: unrepresented, underrepresented, within range and overrepresented. A Member State is considered unrepresented when none of its nationals, throughout the entire Secretariat, is serving in a post subject to geographical distribution and filled in accordance with the established selection process. It is underrepresented when the number of its nationals appointed to such posts throughout the entire Secretariat is below the lower limit of the desirable range. It is within range when the number of its nationals appointed to such posts is between the upper and lower limits of the desirable range, and it is overrepresented when the number of its nationals appointed to such posts within the entire Secretariat exceeds the upper limit of the desirable range. The representation status of Member States is affected by many factors, in particular the turnover of staff and changes in the scale of assessments. 5. The official report on the composition of the Secretariat is submitted annually by the Secretary-General to the General Assembly in accordance with a number of resolutions, the most recent being Assembly resolutions 57/305, 59/266, 60/238, 61/244, 63/250 and 65/247. 6. The latest report of the Secretary-General on the composition of the Secretariat (A/66/347) covers the period from 1 July 2010 to 30 June 2011. OHCHR is part of the Secretariat and the breakdown of its geographical composition has to be seen against the breakdown of the overall distribution within the Secretariat. 7. The table in annex I provides a breakdown of all OHCHR staff members in the Professional category and above who have been selected through the established recruitment process (“regular” staff) against both regular budget posts subject to geographical distribution and extrabudgetary posts, by nationality, grade and sex as at 31 December 2011. 2 GE.12-10251